Bhairab Bridge in Bangladesh

When the minaret loudspeakers broadcast the call to morning prayers in the village of Ashuganj - on the banks of the River Meghna - it's time to wake up for 50 expatriates in the Nuttall camps. Along with over a thousand local Bangladeshis, they get ready for another day's work on the Bhairab Bridge.

'During the initial phase of the project, 200,000 m3 of landfill sand was brought ashore in this way to prepare the site for construction', says Meije de Boer, who has been seconded to Nuttall by Interbeton for the purposes of this contract. 'Apart from these traditional means', continues Meije de Boer, 'over a million cubic metres of sand was dredged from the river - basically to speed things up - and pumped ashore through a pipeline. Hydraulic fill was used, for instance, to build up low-lying land for the route of the approach roads and for the toll plazas. Our project site and the site for the housing of the employer were also created in this way.'

The contract, worth almost £62 million, was awarded to Nuttall by the Roads and Highways Department of the Ministry of Communication on a design-and-build basis. According to plan, the bridge should be ready in the latter part of 2002.